Reviews Of Different Books

Page 21

REVIEWS 227 studies of Bengali syntax lag behind the researches in the field of compound verbs of Hindi carried out in the last ten years. The chapters 7 (phrase structure) and 8 (sentences and clauses) confront the reader with a mass of well known constructions in a purely descriptive, but rather sophisticated, representation; nothing, however, is said about the pattern of correlative sentences, a very characteristic construction in Bengali. In chapters 9-13 one gets summarised descriptions of contrasts of Bengali with American English (9), of Sadhu Standard (10), of the Dacca Dialect (12, written by M. A. Hai) and of the Chittagong Dialect (13). The chapters 14-17 on Bengali literature by Lila Ray, the mother of P. S. Ray, form, on account of the traditional method that is followed in them, a striking contrast with the appearance of scientific approach in the chapters 4-18. For the older periods the authoress follows rather faithfully the outlines given by S. K. Sen (History of Bengali Literature, New Dehli, 1960); for the latest developments she only enumerates some names of writers together with a few remarks at random about the contents of their books. The absence of an index is felt as an obstacle, because the unconventional representation and a rather indistinct form of printing hide the information from readers of this handbook "who wish to have a concise and condensed general picture of the language" (iii) in place of making it more easily accessible. The very short bibliography does not refer to any publication other than in English. * Utrecht P. Gaeffke